Sunday Chessbrunch #6: Biblichor
I realized recently that I like chess for a lot of the same reasons I like books.
Obviously they’re both be rigorous intellectual exercises, but they’re also useful for cultivating empathy, I think. Books liberate you from the prison of your own consciousness and let you explore and internalize experiences you might not have otherwise considered. Meanwhile, one of the keys to playing winning chess is being able to intuit what your opponent is trying to do, which means you have to try and get into your opponent’s head a little.
So that’s all fairly obvious. But I think there’s a sensory component at work here.
I love the feel of books. Old books, in particular. The feel of leather binding and the texture of paper and the bumps of raised ink. I also love the feel of chess sets. Wood pieces and boards in particular, of course, but even my tournament set has lovely objects to handle. The pieces feel great in my hand, and they make a satisfying plonk when you make a move on the mousepad board. Obviously, nothing beats wood, and one of my dreams when I have disposable income is to get a really lovely wood set, accompanied by either a gorgeous wooden board or a table with an inlaid checkerboard. Maybe even one of those wooden boxes to store the pieces, the ones that need to be opened with an old-fashioned key.
Then there’s the smell. You don’t need me to tell you this, but old books have a smell that is so lovely it really should have its own line in the song My Favorite Things. Chess sets have their own particular smells, of course, but there are also a host of scents that I associate with chess that are tied to the kind of environments where chess happens. For me that’s coffee houses, and an old storefront art gallery, and Lake Michigan in warm weather. So chess smells like finished wood, but it also smells like coffee, and big water, and meat and rice, and second-hand smoke.
When I think of chess, I think immediately of dimly-lit coffeehouses before WiFi was a thing. A faint din of conversation and steam, the smell of espresso being pulled up front and a lit cigarette being held by your opponent. Your game picks up the pace. Your opponent starts mumbling something in an Old World language, but you can’t pick it up over the music that just started playing over the PA, Dylan or Chapman or some new act that’s making waves on the open mic circuit. The bookshelf next to you is packed and you’re worried that a pile of old books could come crashing down on you before you can make this bishop-for-knight exchange. (There are worse ways to go, after all.) It’s all a bit heady and you can’t really focus, so you don’t notice at first that your opponent is waving his hand in your face — the one that’s holding the cigarette — and gesturing for you to move.
Like books, chess carries certain sensory and memory triggers that immediately take me somewhere else. Sometimes it’s to my own past, sometimes places and times I’ve imagined but never been. It also invokes my love of old things, the same way books do.
Lots of people have a Happy Place, or some inner mental or emotional sanctum that’s just theirs. Mine is a small room in an quiet house, the walls lined with bookshelves bursting with more books than I can read in a lifetime. A well-loved wooden chess set in the middle of the room, showing the current position in a correspondence game in progress. A comfortable seat by the window to watch the rain. A cup leftover from earlier in the day. The smell of coffee and dust and dog fluff. Sometimes, if I sit very still, the faint sound of someone humming gently in the next room.
I may have fallen in an out of chess as an active hobby over the years. But I think it’s always had a corner of its own in my Happy Place.
James Bridget Gordon vs [redacted], RedHotPawn.com 2018
You can check out the full game on Lichess.
Stockfish says I had a pretty solid advantage through most of the game, and by the end it was pretty decisive. It sure didn’t feel that way, though. I don’t know if my instincts still need to be honed or if I was just dealing with low confidence this week.
- d4 d5 2. Bf4 Bf5 3. Nf3 c6 4. Nbd2 e6 5. e3 Nf6 6. c4 Qb6 7. Qb3
So far so good. I’m trying to be mindful of when Black brings their queen out when I play London, as that’s one of a few tricks Black has that can break White in this opening. There’s a few ways to confront this, and one of the more straight-forward ways is to bring your own queen out and try and force an exchange. Since White has the initiative anyway, trading queens early tends to limit Black’s opportunities for counterplay, leading to a slight advantage. Plus, if Black takes then White takes back with the A-pawn, opening up that file for the rook. (Of course, if White initiates the exchange then Black gets to do the same.)
Black didn’t take the bait here. Our queens were just stuck in this tense standoff on the B-file for quite a long time.
7. …Nbd7 8. Ne5
Stockfish says this was my biggest mistake in the game. I’m not sure I agree. Getting a knight to e5 is one of the key maneuvers in the London System, and this seemed like as good a time as any. Stockfish suggests 8. c5 instead, which I thought about but ultimately decided not to. Black defends c5 three times while White only attacks it once. (I could bring my rook over to c1, but at best it costs me a tempo and at worst it opens the door for Black’s queen.)
8. …Bb4 9. Nxd7 Bxd2+ 10. Kxd2 Kxd7 11. f3 Qa5+ 12. Ke2 b5 13. cxd5 exd5 14. g4 Bg6 15. Bh3 Ke7 16. a3 Rhe8 17. Qb4+ Qxb4 18. axb4
Finally!
18. …h6 19. Rhc1 Kf8 20. Bd6+ Kg8 21. Rxc6 h5 22. g5 Nh7 23. f4 f6 24. gxf6 Nxf6 25. Be5 Kf7 26. Raa6 Bc2
This is when the game swung decisively in my favor. And indeed, it ended just a couple moves later. I gave a check with my rook, then took the bishop with that same rook. Black saw the writing on the wall and resigned.
27. Rc7+ Kg6 28. Rxc2 1–0 Black resigns
Solution to puzzle: 1. Qf8! Black only has two moves. If 1. …Ka3, then 2. b5#. And if 1. …Kb5, then 2. Qe8#.
